Many consumers today have amassed substantial music collections in the CD audio format. The physical aspect of such a large collection however means that a consumer wishing to enjoy their collection from any place other than where the collection is located must make a choice as to which CD to take with them as they move about.
The primary alternative to date has been for the consumer to record select CD's onto cassette tape or mini-disc mediums to take with them when they leave the vicinity of their music collection. By default, this means the entire collection is not remotely available for the consumer's enjoyment.
As a newer alternative, the advent of the MPEG-based MP3 file format has enabled consumers to record (rip) their CD's and store them as MP3 files on their personal computers. This does enable a degree of added flexibility, however as the number of files is limited by the available hard disk drive space in the consumer's PC, it is also an inadequate solution. Since a typical album requires approximately 30-60 mb of hard disk space, the storage requirement of this and similar file formats once again forces the consumer to choose which elements of their music collection they want to enjoy instead of having access to the entire collection.
There is thus a need for a system which allows users both mass storage and portability.